After being relatively inactive since 2014, the Hunga Tonga volcano already erupted on 20 December 2021, sending particulates into the stratosphere, and a large plume of ash that was visible from Nuku’alofa, the capital city of Tonga, about 70 kilometres from the volcano. The Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) in Wellington, New Zealand, issued an advisory notice to airlines. Explosions were heard up to 170 kilometres away. This initial eruption ended at 02:00 on 21 December. Volcanic activity continued, and on 25 December, the island had increased in size on satellite imagery. As activity on the island decreased it was declared dormant on 11 January 2022. On 14 January 2022, a very large eruptionon Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai, an uninhabited volcanic island of the Tongan archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, began. Hunga Tonga is 65 km (40 mi) north of Tongatapu, the country’s main island, and is part of the highly active Tonga–Kermadec Islandsvolcanic arc, a subduction zone extending from New Zealand north-northeast to Fiji. The eruption caused tsunamis in Tonga, Fiji, American Samoa, Vanuatu, and along the rim of the Pacific Ocean, including damaging tsunamis in New Zealand, Japan, the United States, the Russian Far East, Chile, and Peru. At least three people were killed, some were injured, and many remain missing in Tonga from tsunami waves up to 15 m high. Two people drowned in Peru when a 2 m wave struck the coast. Preliminary data indicated that the event was probably the largest volcanic eruption in the 21st century and the largest since the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo
